Gun Group Agenda For '08 Session Is Different From NRA's

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(11/29/07) A Georgia gun group whose agenda differs somewhat from that of the National Rifle Association began a campaign Wednesday to tell Georgia lawmakers that some of the state’s gun laws have roots in a racist past and now need to be modernized.

The group is called Georgia Carry.Org and many of its members also belong to the NRA, but they aren’t necessarily pushing the NRA’s one signature issue in Georgia - the parking lot gun bill.

Instead, the group hopes to focus on laws governing how individuals may carry guns on their person and to win a guarantee through specific law that Georgia won’t try to confiscate legal guns during an emergency as New Orleans did in the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina.

“It is time that lawmakers in Georgia worked on meaningful 2nd Amendment protection for our gun owners and sportsmen,” the group’s president, Ed Stone, said in a statement.

The group has signed on veteran lobbyist John Thomas and his partner William Woodall to handle its legislative agenda. Thomas’s political roots go back to the days of Jimmy Carter and Herman Talmadge, and he was formerly the Georgia lobbyist for the NRA. He is highly regarded at the statehouse. Woodall was Henry County chairman for Sonny Perdue during the governor’s 2002 campaign and his 3rd District chairman in 2006.

“After an extensive study of Georgia’s laws as they relate to the protection of law-abiding citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights, it is clear that Georgia’s gun owners and sportsmen should be concerned about the restrictive nature of Georgia’s gun laws,” Stone went on to say in the press release.

He said Georgia is one of only 12 states requiring a license to openly carry a firearm. “The unique thing about the history of this law is it is a throwback to the days of Jim Crow. The Georgia law was adopted after the Atlanta Race Riots (in 1906) and The Atlanta Journal’s editorials calling for the disarming of Georgia’s African-American citizens,” he said.

The group offers a report on the history of Georgia’s gun laws on its website.

Stone also said Georgia should follow the lead of neighboring Tennessee and Florida and at least 11 other states in passing Hurricane Katrina-inspired legislation prohibiting the seizure of legal firearms during an emergency. In the days following that disaster, New Orleans policemen went door to door and confiscated weapons in what was called an effort to prevent chaos and crime.

Said Stone: “Government in Georgia has the ability to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens during a time of emergency - the very time a citizen may need to protect his family during a crisis.”

The parking lot guns bill got heavy attention last session because it involved a clash between two heavyweight groups - the NRA and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.

The NRA was seeking legislation to prevent employers from imposing rules to keep workers from coming to work with guns in their cars, a campaign it started following one incident in Oklahoma. The NRA contended it was a 2nd Amendment issue. The business group charged the proposal was a direct threat to private property rights.

Originally introduced as SB 43, it was twice sent to the Senate floor but both times was tabled amid intense media coverage of contemporaneous gun-related crimes and despite what lawmakers called strong-arm tactics by the NRA.

When last anybody saw it, the bill had become entangled with Rep. Tim Bearden’s HB 89, which was intended to allow gun owners more flexibility in keeping guns in their automobiles.

Bearden hopes to extricate his legislation from the NRA proposal in the 2008 session, and the NRA also has vowed to renew the attempt to pass its parking lot guns bill.

Much could be riding on the outcome in this election year. The NRA has said in the past that the parking lot gun bill is the only 2nd Amendment issue on which it will grade legislative incumbents and challengers in Georgia. But now another 2nd Amendment gun group may be about to make its voice heard, too. It may grade the issues differently.